We’re In It Together

To the Editor:
Given the wide disparity between the opinions of non-scientists and scientists on issues like vaccinations, climate change, genetically modified foods, evolution and the like, it’s pretty obvious that we aren’t teaching science very well in school. But it is equally true that we don’t teach economics very well either. Or ethics. Or philosophy. I say that because people still don’t seem to realize that if you don’t pay for it, I will, and vice versa either through direct costs or in terms of responsibilities. And given that we are slowly creeping towards an ‘everyone is responsible for everyone else for everything’ society, it shows how slowly we are adapting our thinking to the new realities.
There is no clearer illustration of this than our food industry. It’s no news that we have a problem with obesity. Yet for some reason, advertising by food companies is still a corporate tax expense and as such, is a deduction. So, essentially, you pay the tax that they don’t. In other words, you pay a tax so they can advertise to try to convince you to use their product. And you pay the tax even if you never see that advertisement or don’t like the product. So, you pay the tax for every McDonald’s advertisement for foods that are contributors to our national problem with weight. Even if you never eat there! Yet, I see no screams from either party or from the public to end that. In fact, I rarely even hear much more than a whimper about it. Somebody doesn’t get the fact that we’re all in this together.
Then to compound that, obesity is major problem for our health care system. Ignoring the cost of maintaining facilities, waiting times for appointments, etc. just the direct costs of obesity is around $150 – 190 billion according to most sources. And since most of the obese are on insurance of one kind or another, guess who pays the cost? You and I do. In higher insurance rates. Somebody doesn’t get the fact that we’re all in this together and in this case, insurance is the link.
The Society of Actuaries estimates that lost productivity due to obesity is around $150 billion/yr, and all that extra weight means that cars use around a billion more gallons of gas a year and airlines use around 350 gallons of fuel. And the extra food puts enormous pressure on the land and on the water supply. After all, potatoes are grown on land, and cattle graze on forage and cheese comes from cows, and chickens eat grains and pigs eat … need I go on? And on top of that, we subsidize crop insurance to raise crops that we don’t need and the list goes on and on.
I don’t mean to pick on the problem of weight or food. We could do the same with smoking or sports, government tax deduction on residential mortgage interest expense or any number of things. I’m not advocating anything other than that we wake up to realities. That we look for the wizard instead of simply seeing the screen he hides behind. We’re all in it together.
We are no longer a nation of separate individuals. We are no longer in a world with inexhaustible oceans and land and ecosphere. What I do affects you, and what you do affects me. We’re all in this together and we have to get a new ethic that places just as much emphasis on responsibility as it does on rights.